Update 51 PTS – Week 3 Summary

Alchimiste1 · August 21

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom I'm going to need you to clarify what is exactly is being buffed by strife, all morphs ? or all abilities including things like surprise attack.

Vaqual · August 21

I am not sure that I understand the Swallow Soul change note either. I guess we will see on monday...
But please, try to release a patch without a crazy OP feature for once.

Otherwise: Thanks for tweaking some Sorc masteries, that 40 % healing cut should be impactful, while keeping the heal in a serviceable range (between Leeching and Surge in the 30-40k HP range). Also the change to Static Reverberation looks good, maintaining some power on PvE setups with ground DPS/pets, while reducing the free damage DoT/status sorc builds received.

madmufffin · August 21

CP5 wrote: »

I have only been occasionally checking in on what has been going on this PTS cycle, but the sorcerer changes kind of stuck out to me seeing them listed here. First, blood magic was buffed from an 8% heal to 10% back in 2018, but now being nerfed to 6% it's not that far from what it was originally healing for at launch (5% for those wondering), and I feel that if the problem is that it provides to much healing when activating from every skill with the use of conservation of energy, then why not change conservation of energy to read "reduces healing of the blood magic passive in exchange for resources", making it so those not using that mastery aren't getting a stray nerf for what, over the past eight years, didn't seem like an issue?

Secondly, as a stamina sorcerer main since release, I always try to avoid passives that depend on specific sources of damage. The change to static reverberation clearly has its reasons for being implimented, but what I dislike is, as a stamina sorcerer, my spammable is snipe, my aoe skills come from the bow skill line to take advantage of the hawk eye passive, so am I expected to use liquid lightning on top of volley? Stay in melee to proc hurricane? I mean, just looking at the skill lines, it adds a bit more of a bite to negate, bound armaments, but for my playstyle that's about it. It's just frustrating to see wide sweeping changes done to combat niche problematic builds that end up heavily impacting builds many would call non-optimal, and it hits those builds disproportionality more than the intended ones. Even my lightning mage sorc still relies heavily on non-sorcerer sources of damage, the 20% proc change is considerate, I'll say that, but for the stam sorc, I guess I was always better off not using it, but still.

It's like with the heavy sustain nerf for werewolves, if conservation of energy was the reason they got nerfed, how many years will the turn around be before that change is reconsidered? I did remember how the original U51 patch notes mentioned how werewolves were expected to be 'excellent burst fighters', but in PVE, how is that intended to pan out during boss fights?

In general, for me, passives that are restricted by slotting specific skill tree passives or having to use specific abilities are not interesting to work with, which is why I liked the direction of the sorcerer class masteries, since they were widely applicable, and why I really disliked the templar masteries, which demand a very specific sort of playstyle to make use of, making them feel more like a chore to engage with.

A fellow bow Sorc connoisseur. The class having no usable spammable will continue to be a problem and this just further exacerbates that. Maybe they've finally made crystal weapon usable with this hits change, but given how poorly it's been handled over the years, I highly doubt it. One of the morphs of Mage's needs to be made instant cast with better up front damage and lower/no execute scaling. Then maybe we can finally let Sorc out of this cookie cutter it's been forced into patch after patch.

AdonisJorge · August 21

CP5 wrote: »

I have only been occasionally checking in on what has been going on this PTS cycle, but the sorcerer changes kind of stuck out to me seeing them listed here. First, blood magic was buffed from an 8% heal to 10% back in 2018, but now being nerfed to 6% it's not that far from what it was originally healing for at launch (5% for those wondering), and I feel that if the problem is that it provides to much healing when activating from every skill with the use of conservation of energy, then why not change conservation of energy to read "reduces healing of the blood magic passive in exchange for resources", making it so those not using that mastery aren't getting a stray nerf for what, over the past eight years, didn't seem like an issue?

Secondly, as a stamina sorcerer main since release, I always try to avoid passives that depend on specific sources of damage. The change to static reverberation clearly has its reasons for being implimented, but what I dislike is, as a stamina sorcerer, my spammable is snipe, my aoe skills come from the bow skill line to take advantage of the hawk eye passive, so am I expected to use liquid lightning on top of volley? Stay in melee to proc hurricane? I mean, just looking at the skill lines, it adds a bit more of a bite to negate, bound armaments, but for my playstyle that's about it. It's just frustrating to see wide sweeping changes done to combat niche problematic builds that end up heavily impacting builds many would call non-optimal, and it hits those builds disproportionality more than the intended ones. Even my lightning mage sorc still relies heavily on non-sorcerer sources of damage, the 20% proc change is considerate, I'll say that, but for the stam sorc, I guess I was always better off not using it, but still.

It's like with the heavy sustain nerf for werewolves, if conservation of energy was the reason they got nerfed, how many years will the turn around be before that change is reconsidered? I did remember how the original U51 patch notes mentioned how werewolves were expected to be 'excellent burst fighters', but in PVE, how is that intended to pan out during boss fights?

In general, for me, passives that are restricted by slotting specific skill tree passives or having to use specific abilities are not interesting to work with, which is why I liked the direction of the sorcerer class masteries, since they were widely applicable, and why I really disliked the templar masteries, which demand a very specific sort of playstyle to make use of, making them feel more like a chore to engage with.

Heavy attacks will be our spammable, or, i mean, they do not will work with static reverb (neither light attacks will)

CP5 · August 21

If I wanted to use heavy attacks (or light attacks) as the spammable, then I would be happy with the crystal weapon change, but I'm one of the odd people who likes the feel of snipe, but what's funny is on top of your suggestion, one of the solo dungeon modifiers renders light/heavy attacks pointless, so there's that fun quirk on top of the rest of this pts cycle.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · August 21

Destai wrote: »

This seems like boilerplate. Has any progress been made at all?

I'm sorry this just seems so frustrating at this point. I really don't understand why it's taking so long to just describe something that happened several weeks ago. I'm not blaming you individually, but I'm also not buying this as PR. I don't know where you guys see this approach working.

Hey, no worries. I left that in there, as we're still working on it, and didn't want anyone thinking we'd stopped. We have a draft that's going through some review and iterations, so it is coming along. Once everyone is happy with it, we'll get it into localization. So, within the next week or two is likely.

Wuuffyy · August 21

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

This seems like boilerplate. Has any progress been made at all?

I'm sorry this just seems so frustrating at this point. I really don't understand why it's taking so long to just describe something that happened several weeks ago. I'm not blaming you individually, but I'm also not buying this as PR. I don't know where you guys see this approach working.

Hey, no worries. I left that in there, as we're still working on it, and didn't want anyone thinking we'd stopped. We have a draft that's going through some review and iterations, so it is coming along. Once everyone is happy with it, we'll get it into localization. So, within the next week or two is likely.

Please, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom 🐺-

and

Any thoughts, plans, concerns, updates from the combat team?

Any updates of any kind of werewolf possibly keeping existing recalls? If not, why can they not be on the table?

Please answer kindly, I'm simply trying to get information as a consumer of the product. I've made posts, added tags, opened tickets (feedback of course), added CMX data, added logical data... I feel completely '👻' here.

Additional context found up and down this post-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/697698/zos-why-is-werewolf-balancing-unchanging#latest

RedMamba · August 21

Wuuffyy wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

This seems like boilerplate. Has any progress been made at all?

I'm sorry this just seems so frustrating at this point. I really don't understand why it's taking so long to just describe something that happened several weeks ago. I'm not blaming you individually, but I'm also not buying this as PR. I don't know where you guys see this approach working.

Hey, no worries. I left that in there, as we're still working on it, and didn't want anyone thinking we'd stopped. We have a draft that's going through some review and iterations, so it is coming along. Once everyone is happy with it, we'll get it into localization. So, within the next week or two is likely.

Please, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom 🐺-

and

Any thoughts, plans, concerns, updates from the combat team?

Any updates of any kind of werewolf possibly keeping existing recalls? If not, why can they not be on the table?

Please answer kindly, I'm simply trying to get information as a consumer of the product. I've made posts, added tags, opened tickets (feedback of course), added CMX data, added logical data... I feel completely '👻' here.

Additional context found up and down this post-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/697698/zos-why-is-werewolf-balancing-unchanging#latest

Stop spamming every forum post with the exact same stuff. You need to accept things and move on. It's odd to be this hung up on something in a videogame.

Leivendil · August 21

Sorc needs more nerfs. Ww needs to be viable on other classes. Other than that, good changes

madmufffin · August 21

Leivendil wrote: »

Sorc needs more nerfs. Ww needs to be viable on other classes. Other than that, good changes

Sorc caught strays for unrelated things with this change and as of now WW isn't viable on any class anymore

RedMamba · August 21

madmufffin wrote: »

Leivendil wrote: »

Sorc needs more nerfs. Ww needs to be viable on other classes. Other than that, good changes

Sorc caught strays for unrelated things with this change and as of now WW isn't viable on any class anymore

It's still fine on sorc with Orzo food nice try

Faltasë · August 21

Leivendil wrote: »

Sorc needs more nerfs. Ww needs to be viable on other classes. Other than that, good changes

Sorc does not need more nerfs. This has been said for a literal decade every time sorc comes up in any conversation. Stop 🛑

Faltasë · August 21

RedMamba wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

This seems like boilerplate. Has any progress been made at all?

I'm sorry this just seems so frustrating at this point. I really don't understand why it's taking so long to just describe something that happened several weeks ago. I'm not blaming you individually, but I'm also not buying this as PR. I don't know where you guys see this approach working.

Hey, no worries. I left that in there, as we're still working on it, and didn't want anyone thinking we'd stopped. We have a draft that's going through some review and iterations, so it is coming along. Once everyone is happy with it, we'll get it into localization. So, within the next week or two is likely.

Please, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom 🐺-

and

Any thoughts, plans, concerns, updates from the combat team?

Any updates of any kind of werewolf possibly keeping existing recalls? If not, why can they not be on the table?

Please answer kindly, I'm simply trying to get information as a consumer of the product. I've made posts, added tags, opened tickets (feedback of course), added CMX data, added logical data... I feel completely '👻' here.

Additional context found up and down this post-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/697698/zos-why-is-werewolf-balancing-unchanging#latest

Stop spamming every forum post with the exact same stuff. You need to accept things and move on. It's odd to be this hung up on something in a videogame.

I think at this point people have the right to complain about werewolf PVE nerfs. ZoS is overtuning nerfs again as per usual and WW is catching strays because they couldn't make it's healing and sustain balanced on its own.

Also people are on the forums because they're passionate about said video game, seemingly the only thing that works seems to be crying about nerfs and buffs to the devs so what's the point on the last thing about video games???

coop500 · August 21

I'm constantly accused of being a doomer with my low opinion of how the devs are handling this game and yet somehow they still surprise me with how bad, thoughtless and lazy their changes are.

Doesn't fix the actual problem with WW in PvP, just guts Sorc and WW in PvE, guts WWs if they want to be any class besides Sorc, Templar is still a worthless POS in the gutter, the new Funnel Health skill for Nightblades got gutted.

like what are we doing guys? Holy ***.

Wuuffyy · August 22

RedMamba wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

Leivendil wrote: »

Sorc needs more nerfs. Ww needs to be viable on other classes. Other than that, good changes

Sorc caught strays for unrelated things with this change and as of now WW isn't viable on any class anymore

It's still fine on sorc with Orzo food nice try

No, sorry. This is me on the 6m dummy with "Orzo Food", 6 medium, all tri-glyphs on my sorcwolf without CoE (subclassed to get more power given no more static reverb):

I lasted 15 seconds... I made it less than half of my bar for Rampage.

See, that's the beauty of it. Even dropping down to 35k health (trying to keep a decent level of healing even though I'll fall over with 35k health, no minor resolve, in 6 medium in an actual PvP environment)... "Orzo food" causes me to lose far too much max resource so despite higher recov... I still burn out nearly instantly.

This is on an Imperial btw... which makes this EVEN WORSE as my max resources are higher and my costs are 6% cheaper across the board.

evLRise · August 22

Can you please stop already with the strife ideas and actually address the NB issues people have been asking for for literal months?

Cloak is awful with a million ways to break it and a cost so high it's never justifiable.

Survival is beyond abyssal on nightblade. Compare siphoning strikes heal with heart of flame, crit surge etc.

You have 0 decent CCs. Now with the "you'll slap strife and soulcleaver and be happy about it!" approach, you lose yet another skill slot as you dont have space for:
- 1 spammable for brutality
- 1 spammable for heals
- 1 spammable for offbalance so you can at least stun something to survive.

Why doesn't NB have a way to naturally gain major brutality like literally every single other class in-game? Like jabbing, or crit surge, or netch or insert any major brutality from other class that actually does something and is either integrated in your natural rotation or can be used as a prebuff. Makes sense that the sneaky assassin class needs to announce its presence with a big AoE to get a standard damage buff.

Why is the best PvP mastery on NB worse than literally every mid tier mastery from every other class in-game?

Why are half of NB skills genuinely unusable?
Mark target - horrible skill
Shadow ult - meme material for the past 6 years.
Fear - not used at all in solo PvP.
Path - completely useless skill.
Cripple - ( bet most players dont even know what this skill is ) awful even with soulcleaver
Drain Power - the most uncomfortable way to gain Major Brutality in the whole game.

That's 5 skills and 1 ult. An entire skill line that's plain horrible. And not just for solo PvP. In pretty much every type of content, with the exception of fear for ballgroup, which werewolf does better now anyway.

You further destroyed stealth once again this PTS patch because of ganking since you're so disconnected that you dont even know that gankers didn't even use cloak for a while now.

Like damn, is there even one person from the dev team that actually plays the game and logged in on a nightblade since 2026 started?

Gupitoos · August 22

Finally they came to their senses and toned down Sorcs, which was by far the strongest thing thanks to its passives, stronger then the recently reworked DK, utter joke. Make a gazillion mistakes and just streak away to heal back to 100%.

SonOfAsura · August 22

Please stop nerfing PvE around PvP and start making adjustments by adding Battle Spirit conditions to skills where necessary.

Before U50, DK was a top-tier PvE class. Now it's basically garbage tier, and with U51 coming, it looks like it's going to fall even further.

You keep making people lose interest in the classes they enjoy playing. I don't know whether this is actually causing you to lose players, but when you make such drastic changes to a class that someone has chosen as their main in an MMORPG, it raises some serious questions.

Either you're looking at this as a monetization strategy (Crown Skill Lines, additional character slots, Class Tokens, etc.), or you're simply looking at the situation from a very one-sided perspective.

Sorc is already a decent class, so I really hope this Static Reverb change isn't a nerf. If it is, what's next? Corpseburster? Let's see. People have already leveled Necros, put time and effort into them, and invested in the class. Why not leave them feeling like all that effort was for nothing?

If a change is primarily intended to address PvP balance, please consider adding a Battle Spirit condition instead of unnecessarily affecting PvE. Players shouldn't have to watch their main class get repeatedly gutted because of PvP balance. (Or maybe u need more $ from crown store who knows Otherwise, there’s no other explanation for it.)

hoangdz · August 22

Lmao now yall WWs won't have good Sorc masteries either. So much for asking for Sorc nerfs 😂😂

Wuuffyy · August 22

hoangdz wrote: »

Lmao now yall WWs won't have good Sorc masteries either. So much for asking for Sorc nerfs 😂😂

You seem to have a lot of fun here. Anything to make a viable playstyle far from viable makes you happy?

I personally can't really fathom a meme greater than 'pressure playstyle that burns out in a seconds'.

'Class' whose identity is around a STRONG neutral game has a nearly nonexistent neutral game under any actual pressure.

Faint_One · August 22

Once malevolent offering causes NB self-killed,now strife could be.
As funnel health be a spammable HEALING skill based on damage dealing, why it can be deal lower damge on lower health even drain my health before while I actually need HEAL?
4050cost was much, but same type 3510 cost as Grand Healing was reasonable,reverse benefit to heal more or deal more damage also make sense.
How some class can accept to spam magical traveling knives with 3700 cost ,yet NB use a heal ability with 3510 was unacceptable？

hoangdz · August 22

Wuuffyy wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Lmao now yall WWs won't have good Sorc masteries either. So much for asking for Sorc nerfs 😂😂

You seem to have a lot of fun here. Anything to make a viable playstyle far from viable makes you happy?

I personally can't really fathom a meme greater than 'pressure playstyle that burns out in a seconds'.

'Class' whose identity is around a STRONG neutral game has a nearly nonexistent neutral game under any actual pressure.

I am having fun. Yall got your Sorc nerfs. Now go play your Sorc WWs

Sordidfairytale · August 22

RedMamba wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

This seems like boilerplate. Has any progress been made at all?

I'm sorry this just seems so frustrating at this point. I really don't understand why it's taking so long to just describe something that happened several weeks ago. I'm not blaming you individually, but I'm also not buying this as PR. I don't know where you guys see this approach working.

Hey, no worries. I left that in there, as we're still working on it, and didn't want anyone thinking we'd stopped. We have a draft that's going through some review and iterations, so it is coming along. Once everyone is happy with it, we'll get it into localization. So, within the next week or two is likely.

Please, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom 🐺-

and

Any thoughts, plans, concerns, updates from the combat team?

Any updates of any kind of werewolf possibly keeping existing recalls? If not, why can they not be on the table?

Please answer kindly, I'm simply trying to get information as a consumer of the product. I've made posts, added tags, opened tickets (feedback of course), added CMX data, added logical data... I feel completely '👻' here.

Additional context found up and down this post-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/697698/zos-why-is-werewolf-balancing-unchanging#latest

Stop spamming every forum post with the exact same stuff. You need to accept things and move on. It's odd to be this hung up on something in a videogame.

As someone pointed out previously, this is a public forum @Wuuffyy is welcome to share their thoughts and criticisms within the bounds of the TOS.

I think ZoS should just go all the way and while in WW form they should remove all class masteries, class passives, and racial passives from WW. They have already done this with the weapon passives. Then add those passives back as WW peculiar class, racial, and weapon passives. Add a couple cool WW Class Masteries. Smack a battle spirit tag on them and call it a day.

HunterDawn · August 22

Disable the Werewolf skill line in U51. Why keep nerfing it in such round‑about ways?😅

madmufffin · August 22

For the crystal weapon changes, I feel like it would be more welcome to just have the skill be one strong hit like ele/crushing weapon than multiple hits that diminishes massively in damage like the current version. If you're just going to make it 1 full damage hits and 2 tickles, don't even bother making the change. Doing that after adding the reverb restrictions is just gonna be a slap in the face of everyone who doesn't just stand on someone with hurricane. All forms of ranged sorc (most thematically appropriate build) are just getting dunked on with this.

Wolfchild07 · August 22

WW is absolute garbage now. Good job.

Yudo · August 22

Sorc masteries getting scammed by WW

Also why lock the sorc with class depended procs when no reliable spammable or ranged options even exists?
Sorc = hug stationary targets? When can I play a ranged sorcerer and benefit from passives and class set?

Turtle_Bot · August 22

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone! Welcome to our Update 51 PTS weekly summary week 3. In this post, you will find a high-level summary of the Update 51 PTS – Week 3 top feedback points and issues. The purpose of these weekly PTS summaries is to give you visibility into the main pieces of feedback and most prominent bugs we are tracking. As a gentle reminder, these weekly summaries are not intended to be as comprehensive as our PTS incremental patch notes, and they will not include everything.

Please continue to share your thoughts with us about these summaries. We’ll evolve and optimize them over time with considerations given to team bandwidth, contents, and the right level of detail. Thanks!

Classes and Combat
Itemization – Death Dealer’s Fete [Bug]: We identified an issue where the bonus from this set was not being properly removed when stacks were lost. This is a PTS-only issue and will be fixed in PTS Week 4.

Nightblade – Strife [Feedback]: We are making some adjustments to the Nightblade’s Strife skill, based on PTS testing and feedback. These changes will be available for testing in PTS Week 4:
Cost is now 2700 Health and Magicka, rather than 4050 Magicka on Strife and Funnel Health. Swallow Soul still is only 2700 Magicka.
Targeted at reducing the base Magicka drain, while keeping a higher "cost".

Reduced base damage by ~33% on Strife and Funnel Health. Swallow Soul reduced by ~17%.

All abilities now deal 1% more damage for every 2% Health you have (up to 50% Health at max). This replaces the original bonus that was mentioned in week 3.

Sorcerer [Feedback]: We are making some adjustments to the Sorcerer class skills, based on feedback from live and the U51 PTS. These changes will be available for testing in PTS Week 4:
Blood Magic now heals for 3|6% of your Max Health, down from 5|10% when activated.

Conservation of Energy now restores 1.5% of your Magicka and Stamina when it activates, down from 2%

Crystal Weapon now has 3 charges, up from 2.

Monolith of Storms is now considered a Sorcerer ability in regards to damage done

Static Reverberation now triggers off Sorcerer ability damage, rather than any damage.
Increased base proc chance to 20%, up from 5%. Reduced cooldown to 100ms, down from 300ms.

Warden Class Refresh [Feedback]: This is a carry-over from previous U51 PTS weekly summaries. While not strictly related to this PTS, we see your questions and concerns related to the Warden class refresh, and the class refresh effort in general. We know everyone is disappointed by the delay and would like to know where we’re at with the Warden and general next steps. We are working on an additional written update for you and hope to share it in the coming weeks. In the meantime, thank you for your patience.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom I hope ZOS/the combat team is looking to make better targeted adjustments in the future to Conservation of Energy and Static Reverberation instead of just leaving it at these band-aid blanket nerfs that will only result in the opposite of the desired outcome happening.

The issues with Conservation of Energy have always been:
1. Health cost abilities being made "free" to cast because of the heal (that still heals for more than most health cost abilities after these changes).
2. Core combat proccing the heal (removing the need to slot/use vigor which is equivalent to gaining 1200 stamina recovery just on its own)
3. Overly cheap abilities (such as U50 WW) that essentially become free to cast or so little cost to use that all sustain can be used exclusively for core combat functions making builds far tankier than they otherwise would be in the same gear-sets.

As for Static Reverb, you (ZOS) tried this type of fix in U50 when you first released the class masteries (remember the 0.2s interval?), the interval frequency will do nothing make up for this mastery no longer working off any damage, especially since Sorcerers don't have anything in their kit to synergize with a higher frequency than 0.3 seconds.
If you can't separate Reverb from specific non-class stuff like WWs, or DoTs, then at least limit it to Sorcerer abilities and Shock Damage specifically so it's not completely dead (you know, that damage type that's supposed to be Sorcerers main element and is less supported than even frost damage).

These changes to Blood Magic and Conservation of Energy will do nothing to address the problem builds everyone is complaining about because these changes do nothing to address the problematic interactions I've listed above. The only thing these changes will do is force even more Sorcerers into these same problem builds because every other build got hit significantly harder by these changes than the problem builds did. The changes to Reverb will also only further compound this shift in what Sorc builds get played in PvP, towards these problem builds because trying to build anything else with reverb just won't work anymore.

merevie · August 22

Love that the sorc passive on werewolf is being managed. This will totally end all werewolf dominance in Pvp and you can forget about it and move onto fixing the necro-hamsters running the pvp servers.
PS Anyone continuing to scream for WW nerfs beyond this point should be pointed towards the Wailing Wall or the starter combat tutorial.

WuffyCerulei · August 22

For the love of all things sweet and holy, can the Static Reverberation change ONLY happen in PVP or when having Battle Sprit? I love playing my sorc werewolf DPS in PVE, and I know many other people do too. It’s different and fun!! Putting Static Reverberation to only be on sorcerer skills in both PVP and PVE are just going to kill one of the few fun builds for sorcs in PVE.